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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902458">Sorry It's Late, I Got This For You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfBelle/pseuds/TalesOfBelle'>TalesOfBelle</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>61137txt [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Apex Legends (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Caring, F/M, minor wound detail, mirage asks questions and wraith stares into space for 10 seconds having flashbacks, wraith attempts to be nice - goes better than expected</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:47:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,955</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902458</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfBelle/pseuds/TalesOfBelle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Battered and bruised, Wraith has only one place she'd rather be than home.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mirage | Elliott Witt/Wraith | Renee Blasey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>61137txt [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716643</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sorry It's Late, I Got This For You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When in the void, space can be traversed insensibly. There was a knack to it. It took practice. Certain locations are easier to anchor to, she has her theories as to why. Some more esoteric than others. So here's the sensible theory - Paradise Lounge is a place she has spent a non-insignificant amount of time, just like any other Legend. Her presence there has an echo, the longer she is there, the longer the echo stretches out across the void.</p><p>It's easy to find and it is after closing hours, which means when the portal opens and dumps her out to immediately slump over the bar, there should only be Elliott polishing shot glasses.</p><p>"Woah--!" He's surprised to see her, a sudden burst of light and a whole entire body just crashing into the barstools. Wraith only remains slumped on the bar for as long as it takes her to turn and then slide on down to the floor, "Okay, alright, can you believe people have made worse entrances?" His mouth is running already. He grabs the first aid kit from under the bar - instinct - as he rounds it, "Silva straight up tried to jump through the door window. That tiny little round thing. Guy didn't know it was safety glass."</p><p>"Uh-huh," Wraith winces. The entrance wasn't as elegant as she'd like. There she was, sat on the floor, back against the bar, barstools fallen either side of her. She has a split lip and red has soaked her right arm - there's a tear in the material of her combat gear there, as well as scuffs all over that suggest she's taken a beating.</p><p>"Haven't, uh, scrubbed the floor yet," Elliott frowns, but it's that smiling frown he manages to do. Wide mouth, sad eyes, hand offered down to her, "Can you stand? Let's sit you on the bar at least. We're all locked up so you don't gotta worry about... The kind of folks that'd get a drink in the AM."</p><p>"Yeah." She looks at his hand for a full two seconds before she takes it - she stops short at letting him pull her up. It's more like she's using him as an anchor to get on her feet.</p><p>Elliott tap-taps the surface of the bar. Really he'd like to lift her up there himself, but he figures that's a quick way to get a broken nose. There's Wraith as her usual self, and then there's Wraith who is probably still coming down from whatever fight she had gotten herself into. None of this reasoning makes it any easier to listen to how she grunts as she hoists herself up. He talks over the sound, "So what can I do you for? Usually don't serve this late, but who am I to turn down a paying customer? You are-- You are going to pay off your tab, right? I mean it's no big deal, I know you're good for it. 's just that this is a business. The principle of it, I mean."</p><p>"Elliott."</p><p>"Appletini with a side order of bandages and disin-- dis-- medi-- first aid? And maybe peanuts. I've got peanuts. You're not aller--"</p><p>"Elliott." She's sat up, but given up on much else. She wants to be able to start removing the outer layers of her gear, but one arm is feeling awful heavy and she's learning that as adrenaline fades that everything hurts, "Little help?" She gestures uselessly at some of the buckles.</p><p>"Oh," Elliott stares at her for all but two seconds, and his brain takes on this new mantra of repeating 'don't say it, don't say it, don't say it,' and he says, "Sure. Wouldn't be the first lady I help out of her gear on this bar if you know what I'm saying." He winces at his own self.</p><p>Wraith just stares at him and all Elliott can do is apologize with his eyes as he sets the first aid kit down and - gently as he can - works on unclasping Wraith's gear.</p><p>"Do I wanna know what happened to your arm? Or where that portal spat you out from? We're not expecting trouble, are we?"</p><hr/><p>
  <em>Wraith's ears are ringing. Gunfire echoes loud in her head - the metallic pings of bullets on laboratory walls. Alarms. Shouting. One voice cuts through the noise, calm and assertive, '<strong>Two coming down the hall.'</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>She drops low at the corner, waits to listen to the footsteps, as soon as they're close enough she springs into action - another warning comes, but it's moments too late, 'Watch out!' - There's no metallic ping this time. What she hears is a dull thud and what she feels is sharp pain. Bite down on it, swallow it, process it later. She continues with her movements - low, coming up with a spray of fire from her alternator, get in close to the guy who isn't down yet, make mush out of his esophagus.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>More shouting, behind her now, closing in. The device on her wrist beep-beep-beeps, she closes her fist and exits the world.</em>
</p><hr/><p>"Looks like it just grazed you," Elliott says. There's precious few moments where his voice is quiet and measured, with Wraith straddling the bar in naught but leggings and a sweaty vest top while he stitches up her bicep was one of them, "Should probably tell people when you go off like this. You probably know that."</p><p>"People don't need to know." She doesn't wince, or hiss. She just sits, slightly hunched forward, still as a statue aside from her breathing.</p><p>"They don't?" Elliot asks, wondering if he needs to remind her of where she is and why.</p><p>"They don't," But Wraith keeps a firm stance. </p><p>"Then maybe I'd just like to know," Elliott looks her up and down. She made for a patchwork of cuts, scrapes, and bruises, "Would've had your appletini ready if I'd known you were crashing."</p><p>"Didn't know I was crashing."</p><p>"Point. You don't exactly look like a woman with a plan right now. Huh?" He nods at her, "What's Dr. Mirage looking at next?"</p><p>Wraith lifts her vest with her good arm, it's torn just above her hip and there her flesh is scratched and bleeding slowly. She'd judged it to be a surface level injury, nothing she couldn't walk off at the time.</p><p>"Damn, Wraith, did you what - try to play fetch with a prowler or something?"</p><hr/><p>
  <em>She's found a control room. In one moment it is quiet and bathed in white, she sees fragments of herself all coming to the monitor there. When she drops back into her world, she sees that the room is bathed in flashing red lights and the sirens are still blazing, 'Password is NYZ55KJ6' Another version of herself tells her. She doesn't dwell too long on how that version had managed to crack it, she's just thankful for the intel. With it, she can bring up a map of the area. She can shut down the sirens too, return the lights to normal. When she does, she sees that the control room overlooked a massive storage space.</em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>'Behind you!'</strong> Wraith turns suddenly to see what else the sirens had been covering - the approach of more of the clean-up crew. Her choice was throwing herself through glass, or taking her chances with a flamethrower.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She chooses glass.</em>
</p><hr/><p>"I'll get you some ice for the," Elliott gestures at her, he stumbles over his word choice before going on, "the uh, y'know the everything you got going on right now. Do you want cubes or crushed?"</p><p>"What?" She turns to watch what he's doing behind the bar.</p><p>"The ice. I got a new machine, it crushes it now. Because people want crushed ice sometimes. For their drinks, I mean, I don't do this medic stuff for anyone else, not unless a bar fight happens. Doesn't really happen though, except when Che and Silva really go at it. Does it count between those two? That's more like a brother-sister thing."</p><p>"Cubes are fine."</p><p>"Right. Ice-cubes. Let's see if I remember... This button here and..." The machine he's at rumbles and sounds like it's about to sputter up metal greebles, but instead a handful of ice-cubes are dumped out onto the cloth he holds below the dispenser, "You know I do appreciate you dropping in like this," He says, wrapping the ice and swaggering over - vaguely gesturing with the pack in one hand, "It's a step up from trying to do it all yourself."</p><p>"I can do this myself," Wraith's voice catches at the end there because just as she spoke, Elliott had pressed the ice-cube pack to the bruise on her shoulder blade. Cold. A sharp contrast to how warm his hands have been.</p><p>"Oh? Yeah? Really? No, yeah, no, yeah that's real interesting, must mean you just love the service. The sparkling conversation. The cocktails? I will fix up that drink soon as we're done. How's your head by the way, didn't get hit on it?"</p><p>Wraith sighs. She holds her hand out for the ice-pack so he doesn't have to stand so close and she can hold it over whatever bruise feels the most pressing at any given moment.</p><p>"No, but really I gotta ask. You find what you were looking for doing whatever it was you were doing? I know, I know, top secret They'll Kill Me If I Know stuff, but I'm just wondering if I gotta keep playing doctor."</p><p>"I found something."</p><p>"Oh?" That gives him pause. A slight step back, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. It's so rare she told him anything of substance. Usually it was just 'another lab, another clean-up crew.'</p><p>Wraith nods towards her bag. It was an old thing, even the tough combat-ready material was starting to show signs of wear and tear, "There's a folder." It's implicit permission for Elliott to help himself.</p><hr/><p>
  <em><strong>'Where are you going?'</strong> The voice is questioning, louder than before. In the void Wraith had seen hundreds of versions of herself take the elevator further down into the top secret experimental research labs. Wraith doesn't follow. She passes it, follows different signs, she only needed to look at the information on-screen earlier to commit the map to memory. Here, she even manages to evade the security team currently tracking her down. It was a long-shot, and she didn't know what exactly was compelling her so strongly to do this, but she had just located the archival databanks for the facility's neurobiological research.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There was nothing she needed here. Most of the intelligence stored here was even beyond her understanding, but she knew what she was looking for.</em>
</p><hr/><p>"... Wraith," Elliott has the folder open in his hands and upon glancing over the contents therein he finds himself stumbling backwards until he's leaning against the wall behind the bar. He looks at her, then the words on page again, "This could..."</p><p>"It's a long shot. Might be nothing. Might be something the doctors already know." She looks at him, she even meets his eyes. His gaze is held in hers and she doesn't want to get anyone's hopes up.</p><p>"But if they don't, then this could be it. She could finally... We could..." Elliott doesn't know what words to use to fill the silence. That's not something he's used to. He thinks about his mom, and how helpless about her condition he's felt up until now, "Wraith you know you didn't have to get this for me, right? I'd never ask you to, not that I'm saying it's a bad thing, no this is good but I'm just saying this is a lot."</p><p>Wraith shrugs, "Then if it makes you feel better, consider it payment for my tab.</p><p>Can I get my appletini now?"</p>
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